“Oh, well do I know it!” Edda interrupted, voice bitter. “Yet before she went nursing, when we lived at the Rectory, Grace was organised. She always knew what she wanted and how to get it — even Father noticed that, and it foiled Maude on more than one occasion. Underneath all that woolly thoughtlessness there’s a Grace quite capable of organisation and method. It’s just that she gets what she wants by being helpless, so the old Rectory efficiency has been buried. How deeply? I don’t know. Except that it’s there, Jack. Believe me, it’s there.” She shrugged. “Grace has bamboozled you into thinking you owe her a duty, but the truth is that you owe her nothing. You toil on her behalf, and she never pays. In other words, you give her charity. In which case, go to it, my friend.”
“Yes, a charity duty,” he said, nodding. “That fits. But I can’t have Corunda thinking the worse of her.”
“I have a partial answer,” she said.
“You wouldn’t be Edda if you didn’t. Tell me!”
“We have to become less furtive about our relationship, is first and foremost. If you’re known to be sleeping with me, Corunda will have to revise its theories about you and Grace. Yes, I know it’s scandalous to be sleeping together, but for no other reason than the act. We’re both unattached, free to love.”
“What I call ‘pristine scandal’ — virtuous enough within itself,” Jack said, laughter creeping into his eyes, “but all too easily tainted by exposure to the heat of human attention.”
“Sometimes I suspect you got high marks at school, Jack. I’ll have to leave your name and number with the hospital switchboard.” His laughter spilled over. “That will definitely set the gossip ball rolling!”
Jack would be an ideal lover, the seventeen-year-old Edda had told herself, though it was toward the end of 1928 before she learned the fact as a fact, and then she had only her tastes to tell her. No matter that she couldn’t compare: Jack knew how to please her.
It had happened suddenly, unexpectedly, in the glaring daylight by the river — anyone might have come along and found them! But no one had, and that set the pattern of their luck as this new phase in their old relationship flowered to full perfection.
Simply, they had been sitting side by side on the grass, the horses tethered to a tree, when he reached for her and kissed her with an experimental lightness that she ardently returned as soon as she got her breath back. The kiss deepened; an alien desire spread through her that prompted her to remove his shirt as fast as he was removing hers. No protests, no pretexts, no pretences, no hesitation. Edda thought the feel of Jack’s naked body against her own skin the most glorious sensation imaginable, something far beyond the blind groping of an ignorant brain. It reminded her of being lashed by that snake; she was sophisticated enough to know that the snake/man metaphor was very popular in psychiatric circles. But that didn’t detract at all from the colossal wrench of utter pleasure invading her, or the feel of those muscles.
And her luck had held: no pregnancy, because his impulse had occurred during her “safe” period. After those first frenzied couplings that had come almost without pause, Jack lay so exhausted that Edda, invigorated rather than fatigued, was able to explain her system of birth control, all worked out, but with no place to go until this day. Her energy and logic took him aback, but he listened, and, wanting no babies himself, he readily agreed to limit their sexual activity to her “safe” times. In fact, it had been a shock to find her a virgin; she gave a flawless imitation of an experienced woman of the world, and she was twenty-three. The little fraud! But at least she had prepared for this day, which made her a rare virgin indeed.
Now, of course, Jack knew Edda well enough to obey orders; if Grace needed their affair to be made public, then so be it. The worst repercussions would fall on Edda, who surely knew what she was unleashing. His own reputation would be enhanced. Thus Jack co-operated willingly in letting Corunda know which Latimer girl he was entertaining in a biblical way.
Edda broke the news to Grace personally on her next visit, and, hurting because she was wounded, spoke extremely frankly.
Quite what reaction she had expected Edda hadn’t known, save that she thought Grace would be very pleased, and loved her enough to feel glad she too had some masculine company.
What Edda saw was a stiffening of Grace’s body, an expression of blazing anger on that pinched little face — why was it pinched? Had the person inside it shrunk? And why did Grace’s eyes blaze?
“You — you snake in the grass!”
A confounded Edda drew back. “I beg your pardon?”
“You bitch! You traitor! You selfish, selfish cow!” Grace cried, beside herself. “Why did you have to steal Jack, of all men? Aren’t there enough others in Corunda for you?”
Edda tried, hanging desperately onto her temper. “The last time I saw you, you complained to me that Corunda deemed Jack Thurlow your lover, and you asked me to help allay that. I have obeyed your request. Corunda knows which woman Jack Thurlow is really involved with, and it isn’t you.”
“Bitch! You stole him from me!”
“Bullshit I did, you stupid ninny!” said Edda, temper going. “Jack belonged to me, not to you, always! I introduced him to you, remember? How could I steal from you what you’ve never, never owned? You have a husband, a really decent one at that — why should you need any part of my lover?”
“Bitch! Thief! Jack is my friend! My friend! My husband approves, and if he approves, what business is it of anyone else’s? Leave Jack Thurlow alone, you — you snake!”
Little Brian was standing, arms wrapped around his baby brother, looking from his mother to his beloved aunt in complete bewilderment, his clear blue eyes full of unshed tears. Neither Grace nor Edda noticed him.
“I see,” said Edda, drawing on a pair of red kid gloves. She was looking particularly attractive in one of the newer styles, waisted and longer, in the same stunning red. Nor was she wearing a hat, preferring to let the world see her black hair immaculately waved in the new fashion, curling at its ends. The outfit had struck Grace like a hammer, made her feel dowdy, parochial, the housewife-mother-of-two, stuck in a dreary rut.
Edda’s bag was black patent leather with a big red kid bow across its front; she clipped it under her arm and turned on one fashionable black patent heel. “A ridiculous conversation, Grace, that I am hereby terminating. Your trouble, sister, is that you’re spoiled and indulged by two men, to one of whom you have no legal claim. If they didn’t run after you, you’d be much better off.”
Grace opened her mouth, burst into tears, and howled; so did Brian, equally noisily. Edda stalked to the door.
“Another thing,” she said, opening the door. “Choose your audience. The only thing this bout of waterworks does for me is make me want to smack you — hard!” And she was out, she was gone.
At the front gate she began to tremble, but there were too many curtains pulled part-way back to emulate Grace. Chin in the air, Edda walked down the street looking as if she owned it, only then remembering that she hadn’t told Grace about Dr. Charles Burdum, who Corunda gossip said was taking over the hospital.
Only Tufts weathered those confused, uncertain weeks between the death of Dr. Francis Campbell and the appointment of the new General Superintendent, for she floated above an opalescent haze of happiness nothing had prepared her for. On the surface, her new position as Sister Tutor wasn’t very demanding, as she would have a mere eight trainees under her wing, but she also saw that she could train the West Enders left until time eliminated them; some at least would repay the effort. That Matron had given her leeway to implement her ideas was wonderful, for there were yet other areas where a Sister Tutor’s hand could make vast differences. No one could work at Corunda Base for three years and be unaware how indifferent the domestic and culinary staff were to the purposes of a hospital. Tufts wanted to change that too, make the wardsmaids understand what a germ was and where it lurked, make the cooks and kitchen staff proud to serve tasty meals tha
t earned them praise from all who ate them. Domestic and Culinary came under the care of a deputy matron of retirement age, Anne Harding, one of those relics of a bygone era all institutions seem to harbour in dark and dusty corners. Well, all of it had to change. No more feeding everybody for sixpence a day. Only how was she going to go about dragging Domestic and Culinary into the twentieth century?
If a secret glow of warmth cocooned her heart, that was because she was back on the old terms with Liam Finucan, who had suffered the sixteen months of his divorce suit as unobtrusively as possible, and emerged at its end legally severed from his faithless wife and under no obligation to pay her something known as alimony. That in spite of the judicial ruling he did pay Eris a small allowance was not symptomatic of weakness but of compassion; he couldn’t live with the thought that a partner of fifteen years left the union without the prospect of living any better than her man-friend-of-the-moment decided.
“I’m glad you pay her something,” Tufts said as she bustled around the pathologist’s office. “Oh, Liam, what a mess you’ve let this place become! You didn’t used to be so untidy.”
“I missed my chief assistant, even if she was never official. I could have murdered Gertie Newdigate,” he said, watching her.
Tufts giggled. “Gertie! The name doesn’t suit her one bit.”
“No, but it probably pushed her into an early dragonhood.”
“What’s the lab like?”
“In fine form. After you left I buckled down and taught Billy to be a much better technician than he was. Now I have a second technician, Allen, who’s better trained and qualified.”
“So all I have to do is sort out your office.”
“Yes.” The dark grey eyes gleamed. “I saved it for you.”
“Big of you. Well, come on, man, chop-chop! Sort all these files into alphabetical order and then we’ll look at them, decide if the labels are the right ones, and then file them.”
“You’re a lot bossier, Heather.”
“Tufts, not Heather. And as I’m now a sister, of course I’m bossier. You and I have to produce training schedules of all sorts, but we can’t do that until your office is in order.”
He hadn’t changed a bit, she concluded as the shambles disappeared before a formidable new organisation — far more profound than any he had ever practised before. Necessary, if either of them was to be able to put an unerring finger on a file or book or paper without hesitation. The hospital carpenter, who had a lot of free time, suddenly found himself busier than he had been in years; Tufts commissioned him to make proper drawer units for all Liam’s assortment of records. Since the job appealed to him and he liked Dr. Finucan, the carpenter unfurled the wings of a talented cabinet-maker, and dowered Liam’s office with quite beautiful cabinetry, all stained a matching pale mahogany.
“Which means,” said Tufts with huge enthusiasm, “that when I’m finished with your office, it will look far spiffier than the Superintendent’s. I like that, so you’re going to cough up for a Persian carpet on the floor and some prestigious etchings on the walls. I’m sending your books to a good binder — they’ll look spiffy leather-bound and gilt-lettered.”
As each directive was issued he nodded mutely, then obeyed it; she had that effect, Sister Tutor.
Who doted publicly on Liam Finucan, with curious consequences. Even including the sixteen-month hiatus of a divorce that severely curtailed their personal relationship, Liam and Tufts had been such good friends and colleagues for so long that the entire staff of Corunda Base knew there was nothing shady going on between them. “The Experiment” was a good example. Tufts had found two other men on the staff whose hair flopped in their eyes and blinded them, and bought each one a Mason Pearson hairbrush. Then every morning she attacked the floppy lock, assaulting the scalp and its follicles so ruthlessly that, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, the hair began to grow in the opposite direction. Each man’s lock was measured with calipers on the first of the month and the measurements entered in a journal, together with photographs. And by winter of 1929, The Experiment had succeeded — each man’s lock of hair no longer blinded him. Her two other guinea-pigs were given Sister Tutor’s blessing and dismissed, but Liam never was. Tufts got a kick out of the project, and saved her most difficult problems or questions for hairbrush time. People viewed it as an intrinsic part of a very special, completely Platonic friendship.
Interestingly, the one name never mentioned on the gossip grapevine was Tufts Scobie’s. Given that she was quite stunningly pretty, her Diana-the-Goddess image puzzled people on early contact, but longer acquaintance showed them it was part of her mystique.
The man who understood Tufts’s nature best was Liam Finucan, who loved her with every particle of his being, and never thought of her as Tufts. Perhaps it was his forties endowed Liam with the wisdom never to declare his love, or perhaps it had all to do with a unique sensitivity of the soul; whatever the root cause was, he loved in the complete silence that doesn’t give itself away even by a fleeting look or a tiny yet betraying gesture. Liam and Heather were absolute best friends.
The winter months of 1929 saw Corunda Base Hospital in a worse state of flux than anyone remembered, for the Board was engaged in a storm of cables with Manchester and Dr. Charles Burdum. No new superintendent was contemplated for the moment.
The junior sisters — even Tufts, with a firm job offer — were in a state of Limbo, a name given it by Edda because it was good and blessed, but had no God; the Superintendent was hospital God.
Uncertainty over their futures hovered perpetually — would the new Super be another Frank, or his opposite? It began to seem to Edda that she would be leaving for parts unknown, especially given the shattering quarrel with Grace, who was behaving like someone Edda had never met — indeed, Grace refused to meet! Oh, to think that my twin sister damns me as a trollop! Unconscionable! She’s turned into a fishwife who’d burn me as a witch!
Superintendent Francis Campbell had been a conservative stick-in-the-mud whose sole venture into nursing training, the Latimers, had been virtually forced upon him; repercussions, like the West Enders now starting to train and register in the new way, had annoyed him greatly. What he visualised was a grossly increasing budget for nurse wages and salaries in years to come. Yes, as trainees they were paid a pittance, but they had to be housed, fed, taught and supervised, and when they achieved their registrations they cost far more than old-style West Enders. Almost his last thought before dying was that the eight trainees beginning were all West Enders: his cheap nursing asset was no more. How dared West Enders do this? Good-for-nothing trollops! He might have gone on in this vein, had he not died instead.
Dr. Campbell’s tenure of the chief hospital position far pre-dated the Great War, and many of the new techniques and treatments had passed him by; those that had not been forced upon him by his two senior surgeons, three senior physicians, his anaesthetist, and that perennial nuisance, Ned Mason the obstetrician, were not adopted. Such as the appointment of a radiologist whose job would have been to run a proper X-ray department containing the very latest X-ray equipment, and a psychiatrist for the asylum. As far as Dr. Frank Campbell was concerned, the main function of his hospital was to keep its costs right down and incur no new expenses in the name of Medical Progress. Pah! Hospitals were places to die in. If you didn’t die, you were lucky. Treatment only slowed the dying down.
To compound the woes of the new junior sisters, Matron and her two deputies spent the rest of that winter of 1929, until September, in getting their records and arguments into an order that would impress the new superintendent; he would see the nursing department as a collection of disciplined individuals able to spare him much time and energy when it came to every aspect of nursing’s nature. The hospital Secretary, Walter Paulet, was similarly closeted with his accounts department; rumour had it tearing their scant hair out by its roots over the lack of system in Frank Campbell’s paperwork. Somehow when they were
reduced to black figures on white paper, Dr. Campbell’s machinations to feed everyone for sixpence a day looked — well, rather appalling.
But, as luckily is the way with most institutions, Corunda Base Hospital itself continued to function on doctors, nurses, domestic staff, food preparers and ancillary staff in the same old way, so that the patients lived (or died) in relative ignorance of the drama going on at an executive level. Indeed, it was a rare patient even knew that a hospital had executives.
12
Informed that she was on three days off, Kitty Latimer promptly packed a suitcase, waved her sisters a merry farewell, and set off for Sydney. There she occupied a room at the Country Women’s Club and plunged into a happy frenzy of shopping, seeing films, and going to every play and exhibition Sydney was offering. Talking pictures were just coming in, and she wasn’t sure if she liked them very much — now that the mouths were uttering words rather than miming dramatic phrases echoed on a fancy blackboard, the actors seemed too stagey, too artificial, even too amusing — and did the men really have to wear so much feminine-looking make-up? If talking pictures were to survive, thought Kitty, the whole technique of making them would have to change.
However, at the end of her three days she installed herself in a first-class compartment on the Melbourne day train, as all through expresses had to stop in Corunda to drop their second locomotive; on a through express it was a three-hour journey that she loved, especially given the fact that she usually managed to keep the whole six-passenger compartment to herself.
But not, alas, today. Having settled in her window seat and suggestively pulled the corridor blinds down to semaphore a message that the compartment was full, Kitty kicked off her new pink kid shoes — they were pinching at the heels — and opened the romance novel she was reading with half her mind, thus leaving the other half free to wander in more unconscious realms. The last thing a nurse needed was grim reality in a book. Where Kitty was wiser than most was in understanding that her romance author undoubtedly, in her real life, knew all about grim reality.
Bittersweet Page 15